Mathematics for Social Scientists I

Instructor(s):

Stephen Bringardner, Washtenaw Community College

This four-week series of lectures is designed to review those basic mathematical skills necessary for a meaningful understanding of elementary statistics, data analysis, and social methodology. Course content includes a discussion of mathematical notation, basic set theory, various number systems, the algebra of numbers, the notion of a function, several important classes of functions, and solutions to systems of linear equations. In addition, several approaches to the specification of probability will be examined, and some basic statistical concepts will be introduced. The general discourse will be at about the level of Bashaw's Mathematics for Statistics. This lecture series is most suitable as a review for those who have been exposed to this material previously, but it is also intended to serve as a brief and limited introduction.